Nothing Whatever

So my life is officially in limbo and will be for the next couple of weeks, which is not necessarily a bad thing especially considering I am being paid to be in limbo; however it leaves me with an inordinate amount of free time. Initially I was excited by the prospect of unlimited free time until I discovered there are a limited amount of things to fill your day with especially when everyone you know is either working, or gone. Today I was going to play disc golf but the threat of thunderstorms effectively kyboshed that plan, (I was just pleasantly surprised to find the word kyboshed is in spell check) and so instead I am sitting down in a coffee shop writing a blog (strangely blog is not in spell check) about, well, nothing. I hope you enjoy it.

I recently purchased a pair of Five Fingers shoes. If you haven’t heard of them you can probably deduce from the name that these are shoes that fit individually around each toe; like toe socks, only shoes. I’m wearing them right now. It’s the closest thing to walking barefoot short of actually walking around barefoot that I have found. I love it. They are an excellent conversation starter, which usually goes something like this.
Walk by and double take or stare at the shoes; usually followed by laughter and a discussion with a friend.

“Do you see those shoes?”

“Are they shoes?”

“I don’t know” approach me.

“Excuse me are those shoes?”

“Yes they are.”

“Are they comfortable?”

“Very, it’s like walking barefoot, which if I could I’d walk around naked so these are the natural next step.”

Laughter “I didn’t need to know that.”

“Well if you like walking barefoot I’d highly recommend them.”

More laughter “Okay.”

There is a fairly large male sitting outside the coffee shop wearing a classic “Legend of Zelda” t-shirt and smoking a cigarette. It strikes me as very ironic because he looks like the sort of person who never really grew up. Cut away 15 years and I wager you would find a 15 year old kid playing Legend of Zelda and smoking a cigarette.

The Little League World Series is over and much to my chagrin a team from California won it all. I’m not ashamed to admit I was rooting for the other team even though the other team in the final was Chinese Taipei. I’m not against California in general; I’m against LA, San Francisco and any of the other liberal hotbeds that pollute the otherwise pleasant landscape. I’m also against that supposed twelve year old on team California who was 6’2 205 pounds and hit like 20 homeruns during the series. Seriously... seriously. Who is checking birth certificates over at the head office? I propose that certificates written on Waffle House napkins should not be valid. To put it in perspective there was a kid on team Japan who was 4’6.

I would like to go on record as saying I think it’s hysterical when the kids cry after losing in the little league finals.

I would also like to go on record as saying it’s been a while since I’ve heard some good pipe organ.

My parents were in town the other day and we went to the Duke Gardens. As the name implies it was a large garden with a lot of flowers, trees, shrubbery and such. They had this amphitheatre set up that was full of exotic plants; some people were setting up to hold what I could only assume was a wedding ceremony. There was a little pond at the bottom of the amphitheatre where they were growing giant Lilly Pads. I could have curled up inside one of these things and taken a nap. Maybe some mad scientist could genetically engineer them to be carnivorous and they could eat the wedding guests. I think they should get bonus points for eating bridesmaids. The groomsmen would probably try to save them, and they’d probably get eaten too.

Random song lyric: Feral dog on my right/pissing on a rose bush on this clear frozen night/tell me Mr. dog do you feel alright? - “Bobcat Tracks”

According to the news today is eat outside day. I haven’t eaten outside today but now that I know I guess maybe I’ll go outside and eat something.

So I moved in with a buddy of mine just for a couple weeks because I’m moving soon and I needed a place to rack out (there’s more to this story but I don’t feel like going into it). There was a little confusion about the milk situation and long story short, I used his other roommate’s milk on two consecutive days which resulted in a confrontation about whether or not I was going to be buying my own food. Of course this made things very awkward and now my buddy is gone for a week and it’s just me and this other guy at the apartment so things are very awkward. On the plus side the apartment has a balcony outside which is perfect for smoking my pipe and reading a book.

Speaking of books I’m reading four at the moment. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson; Neal is unapologetically sarcastic which is why I enjoy him so much. It’s a fiction loosely based on historical people i.e. Isaac Newton, Huygens, Oliver Cromwell. He’s also very intelligent and he writes about binary code and integral calculus in a way that you can at least understand what he’s talking about. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway; self explanatory. In Harm’s Way by…uh I forget. It’s about the sinking of the U.S. Indianapolis in WWII and how something like 600 sailors got eaten by sharks because the Navy couldn’t find them. Finally Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley, this is a frivolous read for me. I read a biography about Theodore Roosevelt that said he would be reading Thomas Aquinas one minute and penny pulps the next. So that’s my justification for reading frivolous fiction. I was at the bookstore and the thought occurred to me that I hadn’t read any epic fantasy in a while and I picked up this book that had a blurb from a review on the cover ‘putting the epic back in epic fantasy’ – Bob Readsalot, Time Magazine. So I bought it, and it’s pretty good.

I’m on my second cup of coffee.

The weather gloriously changed today, the high where I’m at is 72 degrees. The day before it was 93 with 110% humidity; how that’s possible I have no idea but believe me it is.

Well this blog started nowhere, which coincidentally is also where it seems to be going, so in keeping with the theme I will end it abruptly.